The Sixth Wicked Child

by J. D. Barker

  The nurses station on one side, a sealed guard booth on the other. The hallway stretching back about fifty feet. Bishop had described all of it in his diaries. The nurses station was empty, but Porter could picture Nurse Gilman sitting there, watching them as they walked by. The guard only glanced in their direction, then returned his gaze to the bank of computer monitors on his desk—dozens of cameras, watching everything from the lobby to some kind of common area and what could only be patient rooms and offices.

  There were cameras at either end of the hallway, dark, black eyes staring down from small bubbles in the ceiling. I had not found a camera in Doctor Oglesby’s office, but I was fairly sure he had one. The one in my room was hidden in the air vent next to the fluorescent light, watching from above, it did not make a sound but I felt it blink.

  Porter located the various bubbles on the hallway ceiling and tried not to stare.

  The doctor ushered him into the second office on the left, asked him to take a seat at the desk, and closed the door before settling into a large leather chair opposite him. He removed his glasses and let them fall against his chest, held there on a silver chain. He wore an argyle sweater of the most hideous shades of red and green, Christmas colors gone wrong. His hair, no doubt once black as coal in his youth, was peppered silver. “It’s been a long time, Detective.”

  This took Porter by surprise. He was good with names and faces, and he had no recollection of ever meeting this man. The nameplate on his desk said Victor Whittenberg, Ph.D. That didn’t ring any bells, either. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

  Whatever thoughts this brought on in the doctor, his face didn’t betray them. He simply settled back in his chair and studied Porter. Maybe contemplating if he was wrong.

  During the five-year period in which he’d hunted 4MK, Porter had spoken to dozens of professionals. It was possible he’d spoke to Whittenberg at one point or another, maybe at a press conference. In those situations, he met so many people at once that he always found it difficult to catalog them. As the person holding the press conference, they always seemed to remember him. That was just the dynamic of such a thing. Or this could be the same situation he ran into with so many others—the doctor had seen him on television at some point and recognized him from there.

  The doctor spoke first, his voice reserved. “Perhaps I’m mistaken.”

  “I have one of those faces.”

  “I suppose you do.” There was a silver micro-cassette recorder on his desk. He thumbed a red button on the side and the tape began to turn. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

  Porter did mind. “For what purpose?”

  Whittenberg reached for his glasses and returned them to the bridge of his nose. “You’re a police detective, no doubt about to ask me for privileged information about one or more patients. A conversation I probably shouldn’t participate in at all, but if I am to do so, or simply consider doing so, I’d feel more comfortable knowing there was a record.”

  Porter knew if he pushed the issue, this man would probably end the meeting and send him on his way. He really didn’t have much of a choice. “Just keep in mind, this is part of an ongoing investigation and discussing our conversation with someone else could be considered obstruction and lead to possible charges. Obviously, just playing this tape for someone else could be problematic for you. Please keep that in mind.”

  “Understood.” Whittenberg pushed the recorder to the center of his desk, between them both.

  Porter tried not to look at it and cleared his throat. “Is Dr. Oglesby still on staff here?”

  “Oglesby?”

  “Yes.”

  The glasses came off again, fell around his neck. “I don’t know that name.”

  “How long have you worked here?”

  Whittenberg thought about this. “Going on twenty-three years now.”

  Porter found himself studying the man’s sweater, the argyle patterns all twisted together in a chaotic mess. “He would have been here in the late nineties. As recent as ten or fifteen years ago.”

  “I…I would surely have known him then. This facility isn’t very large. The name escapes me, though. Are you sure he worked at Camden?”

  “I’m certain. He was the doctor who treated Anson Bishop.”

  “I see.”

  Porter found himself getting frustrated. These canned, unclear responses. “Do you have Bishop’s file? Maybe we should just start there.”

  “Detective, I find your behavior to be very disturbing.”

  Porter wondered how the good doctor would feel if he reached across the desk, grabbed him by that hideous sweater, and tossed him aside as he rummaged through the drawers. He drew in a breath, calmed himself. “I apologize. I haven’t slept much. Investigations like this can fray your nerves. Let’s see what we find in Bishop’s file and go from there?”

  A statement in the form of a question.

  Take that, you shit.

  The doctor glanced down at the recorder, confirmed it was still running, then stood. “Give me a moment.”

  He left Porter in the office and was gone for several minutes. When he returned, he held two files—one thick, one thin. He sat back in his chair and pushed both folders across the desk to Porter.

  Porter drew them close and studied the names typed neatly on the tabs. The thin folder was labeled Bishop, Anson. It was the label on the thick folder that grabbed his attention, reached around his heart, and squeezed hard enough to cause his body to jerk. He looked up at the doctor. “What’s this?”

  “You tell me.”

  The thick folder was labeled Porter, Samuel.

  64

  Diary

  Without turning, the man said, “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Anson.”

  “Anson,” he repeated in a low voice. He folded the towel and placed it back on the rack.

  I could see his face in the mirror. He looked to be in his thirties with short, thinning dark hair and round wire-frame glasses perched on his nose. He had a mustache, but no beard. He’d been wearing a suit, but the jacket sat over the back of the chair near the door, his tie was loose, and the top button of his shirt was open. He’d rolled his sleeves up, too. He was a short man, maybe five-foot-six.

  He checked himself in the mirror, then faced me. When he smiled, I saw his crooked, teeth, and I wanted to look away but held his gaze anyway. “You look just like your picture. That’s good.”

  I almost asked him who he expected me to look like if not myself, but that seemed as silly as his statement.

  “My name is Bernie. Is this your first time?”

  I didn’t answer, only stared at him.

  After a half dozen seconds, he said, “I paid extra, so I need you to tell me that it is. I don’t trust those men. They lie about that sort of thing all the time.”

  I wondered exactly how many times Bernie had done this. He didn’t look nervous, and I think that frightened me more than anything because I was fairly certain I knew what this was, and I didn’t want to know anyone who was comfortable in this particular moment.

  I nodded and was grateful when he finally turned away from me and fished his wallet from his pants pocket. He took out several bills and placed them on the counter next to the sink. “I already paid them, but this is for you.” Replacing his wallet, he took several steps toward me and gestured toward a brown bottle on the nightstand between the two beds. “Do you want a drink to help take the edge off?”

  I’d only drank twice in my life. The first time with Mrs. Carter, and that didn’t end well for me. The second time was with Father the following morning. Hair of the dog, he had called it. A means to lessen my hangover. I’d lost my wits somewhere in that bottle with Mrs. Carter and found them again with Father. I certainly didn’t plan to do that again here, so I just shook my head. “You can have one, though. If you want, I mean.”

  He did want, because he nodded and filled one of the motel glasses with about an inch from the b
ottle and drank it in a single swallow. He shivered, then set the glass down and sat on the edge of the bed. He patted the comforter next to him, and I noticed he had chewed his nails down to the quick. His fingertips were stained yellow, and I pictured him an hour from now standing outside with Stocks, the two smokers huddled together in their secretive little club, a lighter and bad stories passing between them.

  “Sit,” Bernie repeated. “I’m not gonna ask you again.”

  I sat. Not because I wanted to, but because doing anything else would escalate the situation, and it didn’t seem wise to do that.

  Bernie was nervous, and nervous people don’t always act rationally.

  I grew up playing chess alone, both sides, white and black. Not because I had no one to play with, but because Father wanted me to learn to anticipate an adversary’s next move. When you play chess alone, you’re forced to spend a moment as your opponent, thinking through every possible move before them, every possible action, then you return to your side of the board with that knowledge, and because of it, you are forced to reconsider your countermove based on complete knowledge of what that opponent can do next.

  Sweat moistened my palms, and I wiped them on the comforter. As I did so, I considered everything Bernie might do next. I also thought about Welderman and Stocks—no doubt across the street ordering burgers—as well as the man in the van; close, but still far.

  Bernie inched closer to me and unfastened the top two buttons on my shirt.

  I let him.

  He leaned in closer—his breath stank of salami, coffee, and stale smoke. His crooked stained teeth matched his fingers. His eyes fluttered closed. Not completely, mind you. Apparently Bernie wanted to see what he was doing, but they closed to slits and he looked like a snake to me, a writhing, oily thing meant to creep across the ground.

  “Not yet.” I said this quietly as I turned my head to the side.

  I knew what this was. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. My friend Bo Ridley had once shown me a newspaper story about a man in town who liked to corner little boys in dark places and do the kind of things that should never happen. The police hadn’t caught him, but some local man did, and that man had cut off the other’s penis and stuffed it in his mouth before slitting his throat, then left the body in an alley behind the supermarket with a CLOSED sign lying on his chest. I imagined Bernie holding a CLOSED sign under his chin, under those crooked teeth.

  “We should get undressed first,” I told him in a voice even softer than my last words, because I knew that was what he wanted. Those narrow, slitted eyes of his opened then, wide and bright, and he backed away from me slightly, a smile playing at the corner of his lip. His heart sped up. I could see a little vein throbbing on his temple, a crazy pitter-patter of excitement.

  He removed his tie, folded it neatly, and set it on the nightstand. He cleared something from his throat, then took off his shoes. He unbuttoned his shirt after that, removed it, and placed it on the empty bed across from us. When his hands went to his belt, he paused. “You too.”

  I nodded and reached down to my shoes. They were brand new black dress shoes, still glimmering with polish. I tugged at the laces.

  Vincent said he found the tools under the kitchen sink up at the house, and I wondered if sometime after I left, he had reached for the flathead screwdriver on the ground at his feet and noticed it was missing. He’d probably looked around the truck, maybe in the engine, trying to remember where he’d last used the flathead or set it down. It was only about six inches long, but fit nice and snug in my brand new sock. The tip was rusty but sharp.

  Bernie was fuddling with his pants when I came up with it. He managed to scream, but not for very long.

  65

  Poole

  Day 5 • 8:03 PM

  Poole managed to catch a flight out of O’Hare direct to Charleston, but flying commercial had slowed him down. He’d arranged for a rental car while standing around the terminal in Chicago, but even that had proven to be time-consuming. After the plane touched down at Charleston International, they sat on the tarmac for nearly twenty minutes in some kind of line before they could get to a gate. Once off the plane, he’d run through the airport, dodging families, business people, and airport workers in golf carts, got to the rental car counter only to stand in another line. He fought the urge to pull out his badge every step of the way, knowing the moment he did a record would be made, and an entry in the wrong database would end up in SAIC Hurless’s inbox.

  Twenty-eight minutes after arriving at the rental car counter, he left airport grounds in a Toyota Rav4 smelling of cigarette smoke and industrial cleaner. Another forty-one minutes to get to the Charleston Police Department on Lockwood Drive, four minutes to explain what he needed to the desk sergeant, and twelve more sitting in a cluttered conference room…waiting.

  Poole was eyeing the stained coffee pot on a credenza at the far end of the room when a man knocked twice on the door, came in, and introduced himself as Byron Locke, Assistant Chief of Police. The first word that came into Poole’s head at the sight of him was “beefy.” About five-ten and maybe two-hundred-twenty pounds, the man was all muscle and no neck. He wore navy slacks, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, and a loose blue tie. His gun and badge were clipped to his belt. He set two folders on the table and settled into a chair opposite Poole. “So, Officer Samuel Porter.”

  “Officer Samuel Porter,” Poole repeated.

  “Only a few of us still here from those days,” Locke explained. “Amazing how fast the years go by. Feels like a week ago.”

  “You were here when Porter did his rookie time?”

  Locke nodded. “I’d been on the force for two years when he signed up. We didn’t work together, but I knew him. Hillburn, too. Both good men, from what I remember. Pulled their files to refresh my memory. I’m afraid there’s not much here. Are you looking for something specific?”

  Poole had put a lot of thought into that, but the truth was, he had no idea. In broad strokes, Bishop said Porter was trying to cover up something that happened in Charleston. Poole silently ran through his exact words—

  He said she knew him, from his time in Charleston as a rookie. He said she was one of the last people alive who knew the truth about him. She was there, she saw me do it, she had to go.

  Poole took out his phone and showed Locke a picture of the woman shot at the Guyon. “Do you recognize this woman at all?”

  Locke studied the image. If the bullet hole in her forehead phased him at all, he didn’t let on. After more than two decades in law enforcement, he’d most likely seen worse. “Should I know her?”

  “We think she was involved in a case Porter worked on here in Charleston. Her name was Rose Finicky.”

  Locke reached for the phone in the center of the table and dialed an internal extension. When someone picked up, he repeated the name. A moment later, he placed his hand over the receiver and looked back at Poole. “Nothing by that name in our database. Do you have anything tying her to this area? Maybe an address or ID?”

  Poole wasn’t sure how much he wanted to share. “She may have run some kind of foster home or halfway house.”

  Locke spoke into the phone again, held up a finger, then shook his head. “Nothing in Department of Child Services, either. She’d be registered there if she worked in the system. You didn’t get anything from her prints?”

  Poole shook his head. “Nothing with photo recognition, either. I ran her through all the federal databases.”

  Locke hung up the phone and returned Poole’s cell. “You’ve obviously got better resources than I do. If you can’t find her, I’m not sure I can help you.”

  “What about Porter’s case files? Would it be possible to get a look at those?”

  “Porter was a beat cop. He didn’t have case files. He was on traffic stops, domestic calls, that sort of thing.”

  “He told me he got shot trying to take down a local dealer. Made it sound like a c
ase.”

  Locke considered this, flipped through the top file. “There’s nothing here like that. His HR record lists the injury and his time out, but nothing to tie back to a specific case. I suppose he and his partner might have been working something—when you catch a specific beat you get to know the locals, both good and bad, you make your Santa list—those who are good and those who are bad—and your focus tends to narrow. If they were chasing a particular dealer, it wouldn’t have been part of an official case. If it was, Narcotics would have worked it, not two rookies.”

  “The dealer’s name was Weasel.”

  Locke held up his finger again, dialed another extension on the phone, and repeated the name to someone. He frowned before hanging up. “No Weasel in past or present narc cases. I’m sorry.”

  Poole looked down at the folders. “May I?”

  Locke slid them across the table.

  They didn’t contain much. There was a photo of a much younger Sam Porter, one of Hillburn, too. Time-clock records. HR data. No citations. No notes. Nothing Poole couldn’t have accessed from back in Chicago. Loose, at the back of Hillburn’s file, was the report of his death.

  “Wasn’t sure if you wanted to see that,” Locke told him. “I investigated that one myself. Ruled suicide in the end. His widow said he’d been depressed for nearly two years. Medicated for the last one. She caught him once with his service revolver in his mouth. I didn’t hear about that until after, or we would have suspended him, gotten him help. He waited for her to go grocery shopping, then strung himself up in the basement.” Locke slumped back. “The job gets to you after a while. I suppose I don’t need to tell you that. Some of us learn to talk it out, work through some of the nastiness we see, others bottle up the bad things. I never took Hillburn for a bottler, but it’s not always so obvious.”